Enriching China

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 25, 2001 | by Sheila R. Cherry

Perhaps some lessons have to be learned the hard way, say critics of trade with the communists, but they note the polemics do not change. In September, Wellstone took the Clinton administration to task for its claims of a decreased trade deficit if PNTR were passed. "The [U.S. International Trade Commission] found that the China deal will increase our trade deficit with China, not lower it. So whatever gain there will be in U.S. exports, it will be more than offset by a larger increase in U.S. imports from China. Second, we can obtain many, if not all, of those increased exports without passing PNTR. As a recent report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) confirmed, China already is obligated under a 1979 bilateral treaty to give U.S. firms the benefits of any tariff reductions given to other WTO countries, which includes tariff reductions in last year's trade deal with China. Even the administration concedes this point" said the liberal senator.

Without a pro-Beijing Democratic president in the White House to twist the donkey's tail and keep organized labor in line the Democratic leadership in Congress is likely to encounter big trouble. It is unlikely that critics such as Pelosi and Wellstone will allow House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, D-Mo., and Daschle to take refuge in the accommodating proposals to retrain U.S. workers for better jobs, say Capitol Hill sources. In fact, they say, if Boeing is any example the training could be directed to Chinese workers.

The Boeing Co. is the largest employer in the state of Washington. Reportedly because it was impacted by competition from Europe's government-subsidized Airbus, it laid off 23,000 of its U.S. workers in 1999. At the same time, the aircraft maker proudly announced that, from 1993 to 2000, "Boeing has instructed over 11,000 Chinese aviation professionals, half of whom are pilots, maintenance and flight-operations people. Training takes place in Seattle, Long Beach, Calif., and China. A number of those trained by Boeing in the United States return to China as trainers themselves."

Meanwhile, Washington Democratic Gov. Gary Locke had to cajole the federal government to help pay for retraining Boeing's discarded American workers. Locke praised Clinton and former labor secretary Alexis Herman for a $20.4 million National Reserve Grant to help displaced workers retrain for new jobs during a 26-month period when state funding was overwhelmed. State officials initially had hoped to bridge the adverse employment impact of NAFTA and Boeing's ongoing cost-cutting strategy of subcontracting more and more manufacturing to China and elsewhere away from its Puget Sound and Renton, Wash., workforce.

But policy does not always translate as smoothly into real life. Kimberly Thompson counts herself as lucky. At the time she was laid off by Boeing she was a single mother with two teenagers. Thompson was in one of the original groups to get accepted into a state-funded, "two-year" retraining pro- gram. To be retrained, she tells Insight, she had to move with her children into a one-bedroom apartment and trim her budget to the point of huddling under layers of blankets and doling out fireplace logs -- one per week -- for heat.